


Once Upon a December

by Calyps0



Category: The Blacklist (US TV)
Genre: Anastasia - Freeform, F/M, Headcanon, One Shot, Short, Theories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-02-04 08:31:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18600856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calyps0/pseuds/Calyps0
Summary: Red tells Lizzie the truth.





	Once Upon a December

Filled up graves line the grounds, now a memorial, a remembering place. The world seems weightier, here. So many graves, so few names. Skeletons too small to have known truth, too young to have experienced the world the way they should have. Bodies that never knew love, or grief, or sorrow, or true joy.

Too many graves. Too much heartbreak.

There’s an empty one, on the wayside, as a reminder, as a symbol, though it had never known the crunch of milky white bones, had never enveloped a soft and pliant body in cool, shifting dirt.

One mystery, one unknown.

The stars erupted on the night that she escaped, that she gambled with fate with dice like porcelain teeth.

She’s standing here, now, _alive_ , warm beating heart singing in triumph, and even as he despairs he will not regret one moment, one fraction of a decision that led them both here.

Still, this is a crossroads. He rolls his tongue around in his mouth, as if searching for a path, his way forward. His arms spread out of their own volition. He doesn’t know if he is writing his story, _their story_ , in the air, or if he simply needs to steady himself, lest the pain of truth causes him to unbalance.

_Tell me the truth,_ she had said. _The whole truth._ The words still hang in the air between them, crooning in his ear, gnawing at his flesh.

The truth?

The truth is that he loves her. The truth is that he had surrendered to her because he needed to know that his sacrifice was not in vain, but he could never have prepared himself for the person she grew into. A chance. He gave a nameless child a chance and she had grasped the lifeline and transformed it, spun it into a story, a vibrant life.

The truth is that she is divine—not because of who she was, but in spite of it. Because of who she became.

He levels his eyes with hers and tells her.

_You were everything and nothing. A title without a spirit, ceremony borne out of duty, a doll without a voice. When I turned myself in, I wanted to see if it was worth it, to glimpse the future my actions had wrought. I hadn’t expected you._

_But the moment I laid eyes on you in the Post Office, under those dingy yellow lights, you imprinted on me, in my chest, under my skin. You made music, splashing in the fluids of my lungs, striking your arms against the bones of my ribcage, strumming my vocal chords like violin strings. You danced right under my heart._

_So I took you to the place where star and sea collided, where constellations melted and rained down on your skin. Where the horizon bled into nothing, became shimmers, became light._ The whisper voice pours from his lips and dissolves into the night. He swallows. _The heavy metal doors were a klaxon, a beacon, a grounding. Else we might have floated away, died on this glimpse of a dream._

_I told you the truth, then. It’s still the truth now._

_My way home,_ his words echo. _You are the only path I will take._

Her eyes are starlight, wider than he has ever seen them. He continues, bitterly: _But I am a man, and you a deity. I should never have forgotten. I should never have—_

The reminder shakes against his skull, slakes trails of longing down his throat. He sighs. Her frame, heavy with names she never claimed, sags under their weight as they drape themselves around her, sprawl around her shoulders as though they could obscure her, manifest into radiance.

Elizabeth Keen. Masha Rostova. Anastasia Romanova. Lost daughter of the Romanovs, former princess of Russia, heir to the throne.

_Lost lover_ , he thinks, _lost beauty._

_Lost to me._

There’ll be no going back from this, he knows. She deserves the truth, deserves the family she was ripped from, the names, the titles, now defunct. They’re still a part of her, a childhood she only partly-remembers.

She shakes her head, once. Her breath is sweet as summer air as she declares: _I’ll shed my title like a cloak. I’ll wear no signs of it on my skin._

_What then?_ he scoffs. _What of you, what of your duties, of the symbol, the icon you were?_

How can she abandon the throne, when he has nothing to offer her?

_I’m going to make you famous,_ he had told her once. He didn’t tell her that she already was.

His lip curls as he drives the point deeper. _What of the brand that you represent, the mark of your family, the bloodline that you were pursued for so desperately?_

But she smiles at him, then, and her words take his breath away.

_I will wear you,_ she says simply. _You will be my brand. You will be my belonging._

**Author's Note:**

> OK, so I am totally obsessed with the idea that Lizzie is actually Anastasia, and that's why Red can't tell her about her true parentage. I feel like this makes sense with what we've been told about her mother, Katerina, as well as the imagery/references to Lizzie being a princess. 
> 
> If you hate this theory, pretend its an AU, maybe? Or a crossover? (I did borrow the title from the animated movie, but this plotline more closely aligns with the real story. Kind of. 
> 
> Either way, let me know what you think!


End file.
